"hang 'em high "

-- absurd cowboy--theater of the absurd-file photo

So no one was really surprised at the death sentence handed down in iraq to captured president saddam hussein were they ?

It was obvious that saddam had to die . he knew too much . his presence was embarrassing evidence of how dirty were america's hands in general and bush I, reagan ,clinton and bush II's hands in particular .

like osama bin laden , saddam hussein was a former Us employee / business partner who outlived his usefulness and was standing in the way of a mc donald's and exxon version of the middle east .

unlike manuel noriega --another obsolete former business partner of dubya' bush's daddy , saddam after bitter experience , not only expected the latest double cross , he had time to prepare for it and as the architect of the iraqi resistance , from the grave saddam may still have the last laugh on his old business partners , the bushes .


*here , a little background info from the memory banks is required .

saddam hussein began his way up the proverbial ladder in international politics at the age of about 22 .

saddam and a few other young men formed a team whose intent was murder --the cia inspired assassination of the then leader of iraq --one colonel abd- karrim qassim in particular .

young baathist saddam and friends had been recruited into the assassination plot that was the brainchild of american cia.

colonel qassim who had himself come to power in a coup , had gotten a little too chummy with the soviets for american tastes .

around 1959 the cold war was in full swing --the Us and the kremlin globally were jockeying for position and regardless of the fact that iraq is much closer to russia's backyard than america's , or perhaps because of it , the boys in the pentagon and langley saw fit to remove mr qassim from power --there were ALSO , of course , those ugly rumors that the good colonel like iran's mossedegh before him , intended to nationalize his nation's oil interests rather than allow continued anglo-american monopoly over the resources .

and just as with mossedegh in 53', british mi-6 and american cia decided to topple iraq's qassim from power . of course as previously stated , one of the shooters in the qassim coup would be a young pan-arabist , baathist named saddam hussein .

saddam and conspirators , lying in wait , were to ambush qassim's car , burn a few bullet holes in him and thus convince him to leave iraq --as a corpse.

impatient young saddam , as over-anxious youths are sometimes known to do , shot too soon .

in his haste , he killed the driver and left the passenger wounded , but still intact .

a wanted man after the failed assassination attempt , saddam escaped by swimming the tigris river , eventually made his way out of iraq into syria , it is believed , and from there egypt . during his egyptian exile saddam studied law and lived in an apartment paid for by his cia handlers .

cia eventually succeeded in killing colonel qassim and saddam returned from exile to iraq .

cia decided that iraq's baath party would be the vehicle it could use to help carry out american cold war policy in the region . saddam rode the coat tails of an uncle prominent in the baath party , but also made a name for himself as the cia supplied baath with lists of names of iraqi communists party members . saddam headed up a hit squad working for baath party secret police and helped liquidate those on the cia supplied communists lists .

eventually saddam rose up through the ranks eliminating his opposition and finally "retired" his uncle--leaving saddam hussein at the top of the heap in iraq.

ironically , saddam and baath party would carry out parts of the populist agenda begun by the late colonel qassim .

they nationalized the oil and used the state oil revenues to modernize iraq's infrastructure , provided universal free education up to university level ; universal free health and medical care ; access to electricity and clean drinking water , iraq became a secular state with significant educational and employment opportunites for women .

when the 1979 iranian islamic revolution seemed ready to spread throughout the region threatening to topple the fragile arab oil-sheikdoms --iraq and saddam --secular and anti-communist --were viewed by the Us as a bulwark against growing instability in the region .

it is believed the Us goaded saddam into the iran-iraq war --it is known that the Us , during that war , supplied saddam with chemical biological weapons , loan guarantees , technology transfers AND a team of Us defense intelligence agency officers who regularly provided saddam with Us military satellite photos of iranian troop positions in order to give greatest killing effectiveness to iraqi chemical weapons against iran.

the iraq-iran war ended in stalemate after 8 years --saddam turned his attention to neighboring kuwait . the kuwaitis had been siphoning iraqi oil by slant drilling across the border --dipping into iraqi oil revenues at a time when iraq was cash-strapped because of huge expenses incurred during the war with iran .

saddam not only threatened to take action , he revived the old iraqi claim that kuwait was iraq's long lost province separated from the rest of iraq by the british on an oil whim and declared a separate nation around 1917 or so

as negotiations stalled , saddam summoned Us assistant ambassador april glaspie to baghdad and gave a stern warning that iraq's military would not sit idly as kuwait continued stealing iraq's oil . glaspie is said to have replied that iraq's border dispute with kuwait was none of america's concern and saddam correctly interpreted this as a green light from daddy bush to invade .

daddy bush unleashed a propaganda blitz against saddam and iraq . as a result , america's "boy" became vilified as the next "hitler . daddy bush claimed saddam was desirous of forcibly monopolizing the world's oil supplies in order to "hold the western economies hostage" as well as accusing iraqi soldiers of dumping kuwaiti babies out of incubators --all later proven to be lies .

daddy bush's defense secretary , dick cheney showed the saudi government faked satellite photos supposedly of iraqi tanks massed on the saudi border--ready to invade . the saudis were immediately frightened enough to get on board and joined the Us military coalition against saddam .

the Us killed over a quarter million iraqis in gulf war one , mostly civilians . a document circulated among the "allies" suggested --in direct violation of geneva accords prohibiting military targeting of infrastructure vital to civilian life --that iraq under saddam had spent considerable sums of money on building water treatment facilities for both drinking water and sewage --and the destruction of these facilities by allied bombs would cause significant distress to iraqi people and thus to the iraqi regime. the allied planes and cruise missiles demolished iraq's water treatment infrastructure . iraqis were forced to drink directly from rivers and stream that raw sewage flowed into .

under the economic sanctions put in place by the Un supposedly to prevent Iraq from rearming , the sale of items such as chlorine for water purification were prohibited . the iraqis also found it very difficult to obtain materials and machinery needed to repair their destroyed water treatment system . in a dozen years , of the 1,500,000 iraqis who died as a result of the economic sanctions , many were elderly and children who perished from easily preventable diseases caused by water borne illness --received from drinking dirty water .

in retrospect , in all likelihood , saddam did disarm after the first gulf war in desperation to get the economic sanctions lifted . but the Us and Britain used their influence to keep sanctions in place apparently softening up iraq for the eventual invasion ,occupation and "liberation" by the western allies of iraq from its oil .

there were at least two coup / assassination attempts against saddam that were directly assisted by cia personnel who had infiltrated Un weapons inspection teams . in one attempt , access to saddam's presidential palaces was demanded by weapons inspectors who then planted electronic devices to monitor the quantity of radio messages sent by iraqi military in the area . the idea was that saddam's location could be determined by pinpointing the location of his bodyguarding details . it was believed saddam's personal security details would need to do large amounts of radio communication in order to effectively coordinate their efforts .

it followed that where ever the most amount of radio communications were taking place --saddam hussein's security detail , and thus saddam himself would not be far behind .

after the cia's second attempt on his life barely missed , saddam's people found the bugs planted in his palaces , figured out what cia was doing and demanded all americans be removed from Un weapons inspections teams .

realizing they had saddam in a corner , of course the Us refused to remove the americans , saddam ordered all of the weapons inspectors out of iraq and the Us media played it up as more proof of saddam's noncompliance with Un demands --iraq's refusal to disarm , saddam's "insane obsession to get and use wmd on the Us and western world "--more proof for the "necessity of sanctions" , no-fly zones , more bombings of iraq , "necessity for regime change" , etc, etc, blah , blah , blah.

after bill clinton went out of the whitehouse and "dubya" bush went in --former dubya administration officials have said that ousting saddam was job number one on the new administration's "to do" list .

the government staged terror of the 9-11 attacks provided the excuse the bushes needed to again hand out a feeding frenzy's worth of lucrative war contracts to bush family cronies and to go after their old employees once and for all--a , cowboy type theater of the absurd showdown with "dub" playing town sheriff .
"good place fer a 'necktie party'...that ol boy gonna swing from right thar"

It took 2 years from the time of the 9-11 attacks for the sheriff and his posse to reach the dry prairies of iraq . sheriff "dub" ordered saddam to get out of town by sundown . of course the old bandito refused and they met for a showdown at high noon .

when the gunsmoke cleared , bodies and rubble littered the town , the old bandito was in jail and his two boys and grandson were pushing up daisies on boot hill.

but just when the old prairie town should have been safe for sod busters , cattlemen , and oil prospectors , the old grizzled bandito's pistoleros and the townfolk themselves turned on sheriff dub and his posse making their lives a living hell.

in efforts to calm the townsfolk and restore order , sheriff dub brought in a smoke and mirrors medicine show for diversionary entertainment and put the old bandito on "trial".

--grizzled old bandito--file photo

Of course the sheriff had to conceal from the trial record the undisputed fact that his daddy and the old bandito once rode together back in the wild and wooly days .

before he and the posse arrived in town , the sheriff had quickly seized 12,000 pages of documents detailing the mutual exploits and the extent to which his daddy and the old bandito had been partners in crime .

now , with the town folk formed into an angry mob and the total breakdown of law and order , with the sheriff and posse clearly impotent to stop the rampant lawlessness , we get the news of a guilty verdict for the old bandito as his pistoleros and the angry townfolk wreak total havoc upon the sheriff's posse .

the old bandito will probably hang , but his hands are just as dirty as quite a few of those knotting the rope .

personally i'm of the belief that if you're going to hang anyone , hang em all--all the guilty parties --the old bandito and them that "rode" with him--whether they are sheriff , posse or not --all the ones with innocent blood on their hands --starting with the sheriff's daddy --"hang em high".

*note: when did iraqis pick up the practice of hanging people? i thought they preferred firing squads, or beheadings as the saudis do in the middle east ? is the use of hanging simply more absurd cowboy theater intended for an american audience--appealing to an american sense of rope justice ?
-- theater of the absurd--absurd cowboy, building his own gallows--file photo